Chapter 774 An Angry Sonia
On the way back, Sonia sat in the backseat with a particularly sullen expression and judging by the way her chest was rising and falling rapidly, it was clear that she was still furious.
Toby registered how hard she was breathing, then let out a dry cough as he retracted his gaze from her chest area. He thought it was best to proceed with caution as he asked, “Are you still mad?”
He could tell that Sonia had only intended to mock Anya at the beginning, but toward the end, there was no mistaking that she was boiling with rage, which explained why she was still sulking until now.
Not realizing that the way her chest rose and fell had provided quite the suggestive show to the man next to her, Sonia turned to glare at him and snapped, “Are you asking me to calm down after encountering such a shameless little skank? Believe it or not, she would have leaped into an entire dance sequence about how she’d like to take care of you and nurse you back to health to ease her rotten conscience had I not asked her to put a sock in it! She would have insisted on staying by your side or something like that.”
“And how are you so sure about that?” Toby asked with a teasing smile.
She scoffed. “Didn’t you see how her eyes sparkled when she saw you? Please, I can smell her desperation from miles away! If she likes you that much, surely she’d try to find a way to stay by your side, or at the very least get close to you. Besides, she was sobbing herself silly when she begged me to let her take care of you last night!”
“Oh, I can vouch for that, President Fuller,” Tom spoke up from the driver’s seat, nodding firmly as he glanced into the rearview mirror to address Toby.
Toby shot him a cold look.
The assistant retracted his neck and turned his attention back on the road, pretending as if he said nothing at all.
However, his comical demeanor amused Sonia, who sputtered and felt the rage in her die down. “See, even Mr. Brown thinks I was right to put that skank in her place. The bottom line is that the woman is shameless and she most definitely would have made ridiculous requests if I hadn’t given her a piece of my mind, so I did.” At the mention of this, she curiously eyed Toby. “I must have made myself look bad when I snapped at her back there.”
Toby raised a brow. “Why would you say that?”
“Because no one likes a shrew, which I’d wager is what I looked like earlier,” she pointed out as she nervously assessed him.
He stared into her eyes for a few seconds, and under Sonia’s anxious scrutiny, he suddenly chuckled and reassured, “Not at all!”
Sonia let out an obvious sigh of relief, though she still eyed him skeptically as she asked, “Really?”
“Really,” Toby promised, nodding firmly.
She laughed. “Well, that’s more like it, I suppose. I was thinking how maniacal I must have looked while putting that woman in her place.”
“No, you actually looked pretty adorable,” Toby commented as he propped his head against his knuckles, sounding serious.
“Really? Don’t spin me a line now, Toby. Was I really adorable?” Sonia asked, her eyes wide with surprise.
“Definitely adorable,” he confirmed as his smile deepened. “I have never seen you give someone a piece of your mind ever so vigorously and you didn’t even point a finger at her or make gestures in her face. You articulated your words well, but what was more endearing was how your eyes were wide and your face was flushed. You looked like an angry pufferfish.”
He wasn’t at all trying to comfort her; he actually meant what he said. He thought an angry pufferfish was exactly what she had looked like back there in the parking lot; she didn’t so much look as if she was trying to put the woman in place as she was trying to pick a fight with Anya. There had been a brief moment or two when Toby thought Sonia might burst into tears.
Which, he thought with amusement, was his idea of endearing.
Upon hearing his description, however, Sonia tried to imagine what she must have looked like to Toby, but that alone was enough to make her embarrassed. She immediately buried her face in her hands and tipped her head back, leaning into the seat as she prayed for a hole to open up in the ground and swallow her.
At the sight of this, Toby reached to pull her hand away from her face to cajole, “Come on, put your hands down. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about, so why are you hiding your face all of a sudden?”
“You don’t get it!” she responded, her voice muffled by her palms.
He chuckled. “I don’t, indeed, but I’m really happy about it.”
“Happy?” Sonia froze before she took one hand away from her face to reveal half her features and cast a sideways glance at him. “What for?”
“I’m happy that you put her in her place,” he elaborated.
The corner of her lips twitched. “Okay, but why?” Doesn’t he find it embarrassing for his girlfriend to lose her cool in front of everyone?
As if sensing her uneasiness, Toby stopped teasing her and grew serious, then pointed out matter-of-factly, “I’m happy that you put her in her place because that means you care enough about me to be possessive, just as I do for you. It reassures me that I’m not the only one fighting for us and standing guard over our relationship. I know there are men out there who have feelings for you, too, like Carl, Zane and Charles.”
At the mention of this, he eyed her steadily and added, “I never liked seeing the three of them show up in front of you and I would be seized with the urge to chase them away, because that’s how much I love you and how much I want you for my own. I don’t want anyone else to butt in and pull us apart because there’s only enough room in this relationship for the both of us. So when I saw you give that lady a piece of your mind after she made her feelings for me known, I was elated. It only goes to show that you’re serious about us, and that you’d cut anyone who tries to get between us.”
Having heard all this, Sonia blushed all the way to the tips of her ears as she mumbled, “You’re right to say that I only snapped at Anya because I could tell she had feelings for you. I just couldn’t take it; if I could have endured it and didn’t stop her from making her shameless advances, then it would have meant that I didn’t love you or care about you enough. However, it’s precisely because I love you so much that I became so angry, and I wanted to shout some sense into her so that she would know not to cross the line. She needed to learn her place, and that was all I wanted her to understand.”
She lowered her gaze, which suddenly grew icy as she added, “I’ve been through a lot, which is why I am really defensive about our relationship. I wouldn’t be able to stand having someone trying to stir up trouble to tear us apart. I’d probably nip it in the bud before things spiraled out of control and we both ended up getting hurt, or I’d give up on us at worst. I would never cling onto a fraying relationship like some hopeless, hysterical shrew.”
Sonia remembered how the sirens had sounded off in her head when she first saw Anya in the room with Toby. That lady had obvious intentions for Toby and Sonia had wanted nothing more than to get rid of her. She wanted to dash all of Anya’s hopes to get close to Toby and stand guard over this painstakingly-recovered relationship of theirs.
That said, it wasn’t as if she didn’t believe her love with Toby was strong enough to take a hit. She just didn’t want to have to deal with all these disgusting and unnecessary challenges along the way.
Tina had already brought enough trouble and heartache to her and Toby and she didn’t want their relationship to suffer from another skank’s schemes.
As such, Sonia had asked Tom to immediately remove Anya from their presence. She certainly hadn’t expected Anya to be so persistent as to wheel herself over to see him earlier today. When Anya did not see Toby anywhere near Tom, she had waited patiently at the hospital parking lot just to get a glimpse of Toby and speak to him. This would have made for a touching story if it weren’t for the fact that she was pining after Toby.
Unfortunately, that was not the case and her continuous attempts to try and get his attention inevitably caused Sonia’s rage to burn. Why should I have to spare her feelings then? Sonia reasoned with herself.
Sonia knew she couldn’t be patient enough to wait for Toby to put the annoying girl in place, and she definitely was not saintly enough to hold back until the woman showed her hand.
What she had wanted to do back there was to strike first and weed the woman out of the picture before things festered. She had wanted to crush that woman’s hopes entirely!
